for thoughts and other useless things

not everybody has a story. some stories are just fabricated in their minds, pulled together from thoughts and memories magnetically until they form a condensed sphere like a liquid disco ball, spinning rapidly like unmodeled clay on a table top, changing shape every time there’s even the slightest touch.

for a second, she accidentally presses too hard, and her finger indents itself into the sphere, pulling a deep cut across the surface. startled, she retracts her hand from the spinning memories that have been gathered to form a background, unwilling to allow the action to set precedent to any kind of future.

the pavement is dark and cool as the rubber pedals across it, dipping into every bump so that she feels a jolt every single time. she imagines cobblestones accumulating in the distance behind her, the distance embodying everything she has decided to escape, even though she knows she should be concentrating on the road ahead.

she closes her eyes and lets her senses guide her as she pedals and tilts the handlebars slowly. imagination is more vivid when one’s eyes are closed.

a gust of wind brings her mind into the future. she sees it with cloudy tunnel vision; blurred details of figures moving about to the music of silence. they dress like detectives in film noir, with trench coats and top hats, gliding from archway to archway, discarding their cigarettes as they search of their next adventure.

she steps out from the quiet darkness towards the glow that’s so familiar yet suddenly so far. the surrounding concrete grumbles as it blocks the wind and holds on to the escaping light within, it’s cracks passing on a series of chinese whispers about her fate.

the tunnel is cold, but her skin doesn’t reflect the temperature of her soul. the flask, now discarded, catches the moonlight as it lays between the crushed stones and rolled steel, only moments away from the last imprint of her recently purchased shoes.

a fragment of her past drifts in, the sensation incomplete but immovable, the memory nagging with blurred edges and faded lines in the front of her mind while the truth eludes her over and over again.

it’s weird to think of how an object, a tangible thing, could fade away in one’s memory so easily while in reality it is solid and altogether unchanging. even with time, it remains, perhaps aged and worn, but essentially the same.

she almost reached out today. in the midst of mulling over all the complications, all her anxieties, all her loneliness, she opened a window. she stared at the window, it’s pale nothingness showing her the blanks in their correspondence, in their history and in their story.

she dared herself to do it. to reach into the window, all the way through to the other side. to create a beginning, any kind of beginning, that may result in anything else but silence. and for a second she almost did. the caret started moving. forwards, slowly, then backwards at quadruple the speed.

the rain splashes heavily as she walks, but its effect is nothing compared to the vibrations caused by the impact of her feet in the puddles. the pools of water make way for her delicate shoes and heavy stomps, feinting sideways before rushing to reconnect, only to be separated again by the next set of steps that come along.she skirts around the deep puddles with the belief that the extra effort will affect the outcome somehow; as if in the end, when she reaches her destination, she will have benefitted slightly more than if she had collided with the puddle head-on.Continue reading →

the ascent of the elevator makes her heart beat faster even though she can barely feel a thing. it drops a little in her chest, but she stands still as if nothing is affecting her.

unlike most, she feels comforted by the lack of open space. she enjoys corners and confined spaces and hates open fields and vast emptyness. for what is there to fear when you can see everything around you? when you can sense any approach, any movement, any danger. when you know exactly what’s coming, and exactly how to react.